SFSU's
Documentary Film Institute will honor American documentary filmmaking
pioneers Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker with the $25,000 George
and Judy Marcus Lifetime Achievement Award during a retrospective of
the filmmakers' work at the de Young Museum and Castro Theatre, March
2 – 5. Twenty-two of their films will be screened, and both will
participate in question-and-answer sessions.

"Decades before network television's version
of reality, Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker were documenting
life, unscripted, as it
happened," said Professor Stephen Ujlaki, Documentary Film Institute
director and Cinema Department chair.

Both filmmakers are credited with originating the
cinema vérité,
or "direct cinema," style of American documentaries of the
1960s. They developed an unobtrusive, handheld, "fly-on-the-wall" filming
style, and sparked technical innovations that have revolutionized documentary
filmmaking, such as using lightweight, synchronous sound equipment
that allows full portability. The duo's combined body of work is extensive
and varied.

Leacock, who as a young man spent three years shooting
combat photography in Burma and China, has said that he has always
strived to make films
that give viewers the "feeling of being there." His 2002
film, "A Musical Adventure in Siberia with Sarah Caldwell," will
screen at the festival, as will "A Stravinsky Portrait," the
filmmakers' 1965 collaboration with Rolf Liebermann.

Leacock's and Pennebaker's collaboration "Monterey Pop," which
captured performances by Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin and
many others during the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, will
also screen at the festival.

"Both of us trained as 'techies' -- [Pennebaker] in electrical
engineering at MIT and me in physics at Harvard -- but both of us madly
enjoy observational and imaginative filmmaking," Leacock said
in an e-mail from France, where he lives.

"Don't Look Back," Pennebaker's 1967 release
about folk singer Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England, is considered
the first "rockumentary." Pennebaker's
collection of work -- in collaboration with Chris Hegedus
-- includes documentaries on jazz great and SFSU Artist-in-Residence
Branford Marsalis, pop icons David Bowie and Depeche Mode, Broadway
legend Elaine Stritch, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and rock 'n' roller
Jerry Lee Lewis, among many other artists.

Pennebaker explored politics and economics with such
films as "The
War Room," "Startup.com," PBS' "The Energy War" and "Jingle
Bells," about Robert F. Kennedy as he celebrates Christmas 1964
with Sammy Davis Jr. and New York City schoolchildren.

SFSU's Documentary Film Institute, which supports
nonfiction filmmakers by bringing their films to the attention of
wider audiences, is a
project of the University’s International Center for the Arts,
which is housed in the College
of Creative Arts.

SF State alumni George and Judy Marcus donated $3
million to establish the center in 2005. Israel "Cachao" Lopez, known as the creator
of Mambo music and the "godfather of Cuban bass," was the
first recipient of the Marcus Prize in 2005.